Pray for Kenya

I just noticed that there are over 100 people dead in Kenya because of the current election turmoil. I would encourage everyone to pray for Bro. Mbogo and the rest of the saints there, that they would be kept safe, and be able to use this to the advantage of the Kingdom of God, leading people to Christ during this time. Pray that they will be able to show many the Prince of Peace during this time of chaos.

Almost a new year!

Well, it's almost time for a new year. With a 10 1/2 month old around here, we experience new things all the time. Some great, some just interesting. Just yesterday she finally stood up on her own without pulling up on something else. She seems to grow constantly in that she is always learning or doing something new. Yesterday was nice as I didn't have to go any where. Of the previous 5 Saturdays, 4 were out of towners and the fifth we had our Kids' Day at church. So it was nice being able to take things a little slower, even though I did have a few things to do.
I am hoping during the coming months to be able to work more for the Lord, and to study and pray more. One of my blessings this Christmas, my Palm T|X, has enabled me to download a number of books onto it, including the Bible, which allows me to always have something to read whenever I have it on me. This is great, because I love to read, but often don't get around to it. Now all that I need is for someone to create PDF files of all the church books!!

May the you continue working for the Lord.

Merry Christmas!

I hope that all of you have a terrific Christmas. We have three days of Christmas here. Last night, after our candlelight service at church, which was pretty nice, we went to my mom and grandpa's house to have dinner and open gifts. Then, this morning we had Anna open her gifts up, because tomorrow, we will be going to open gifts at Kelley's parents' house. We figured Anna would get bored with things if she opened gifts here and there tomorrow.
I want to say thank you Lord for one gift especially. Not because it was the most expensive thing, but because it is something that I have been looking at getting for quite a while, and it just wasn't a wise financial decision for us to get. I got a Palm Handheld last night as a present. It came as a total shock. I had not idea whatsoever. I can say that I will definitely put it to good use. It will be great for me to keep track of things, and to read through documents and files, when I am away from the computer. And it has wifi and bluetooth so, I can read stuff on the net while kelley is busy on the computer, and communicate with my phone.
I am thankful during this year to be able to spend time during Christmas with most of my family. And I am thankful that our Lord and Saviour came to earth so that you and I might have life more abundantly. Let us remember the Saviour most of all during this time.

A while

Well, it's been a while since I have posted anything. We have been pretty busy.
Last Saturday we had our Kids' Day at Church we only had a couple of kids, but the weather was supposed to be bad and I think that probably scared off some of the parents in the neighborhood. We did have one new child that attended. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Taffee the clown was a big hit. I guess she was also a big hit at Walmart later, as they had to stop by there on the way home!
Well, I guess that's all for now. Please pray for the mission in Evansville, that we can get things set up and operating smoothly.

Let us lift up Christ.

Time Saver for Blogaholics

As you may or may not have noticed, you can subscribe to this blog by clicking on a link and it will send you an email with whatever has been posted. When I discovered this on another blog, I thought what a great idea. So, a few of the blogs that I read, I subscribed to, that way I didn't need to go and check the blog to find out if anything had been post. Saving a lot of time depending on how many blogs you read. My problem was, the vast majority of the blogs that I check, friends and church members, don't have any kind of subscription service. So, I was still wasting a lot of time checking up on everyone to see if they had posted.
Then I switched to the Google Reader. It does the same thing as the email subscription, except you can subscribe to some people's blogs who don't have a subscription set up. You just search for it with the Reader, and when you find it you can subscribe. Now, it doesn't work with everyone's blog, but seems to work with most. So, if you read a lot of blogs, you might give it a try. With a look at one page, you can find who on your list has posted anything new since the last time you read, and it even brings up the post for you. Just one way I have found to save time, while still keeping up with everyone.
For the record, Google Reader is not the only service that you can use to read feeds, but I don't know if the others will let you subscribe to people's blogs that don't specifically have a feed set up.

Saturday Again

Well it's Saturday again. Another busy week has just flown by. Can't really remember much details of the week, other than just working.
Mom's surgery yesterday went well. They thought that it would be 5 hours and turned out to be only 2 1/2 hours. She was able to come home today and seems to be doing well.
We had a good time at the Regional VLB Christmas Banquet in Elizabethtown, KY today. There was good preaching as well as good food. Kelley did a good job preaching, even though she has not been feeling very well. The only disappointment was that more people were not able to make it, for various reasons.
I preached at Wheeler Mission in Indianapolis tonight. The place was totally packed out. When it starts getting colder, there is hardly any room to move there during services. There was easily well over 100 people there. We had a good service. The men seemed pretty receptive.

Thank you Lord for taking us through another week, and keeping mom safe during surgery. And thank you for the healings that were testified about today.


Keep reaching out to the lost and dying souls of this world.

Good Week!

Well, we have had a good week. Had a good Thanksgiving with the family.
We received a call earlier in the week about a young man that had just gotten saved in Evansville. A friend of his from Arizona, contacted us about working with him and helping him. After I visited with the Loyas yesterday, I was able to make contact with him. I was unable to visit with him, but we plan on meeting the next time I am able to go down there. Also, a family that the Loyas had been working with before is planning on moving back to the Evansville area. This, with the other members, and contacts we have in the area, means that soon we will hopefully have about 10-20 people in the Evansville area. Praise the Lord! Some, such as this young man and another family, are recently saved. Others are those that are established and can help feed these younger ones. I am looking forward to what God is doing in this area. Well, got other things to do so, guess I will post more some other time.

Continue to be faithful to Him who has called you.

New web address

Our local church's new web address is www.thechurchofgodamity.org. The old one will work for the next few months, but due to the change in our location we decided to change this address as well.

Happy Thanksgiving

May everyone enjoy Thanksgiving Day and let us all truly be thankful for what God has given us.
I am thankful for the many blessings in my life. Two of the biggest being my two girls. My wonderful wife and my daughter are so special to me. I am thankful that God has allowed them to be a part of my life.

Sunday

We had a good time Sunday. We had a good turn-out for attendance, and after the service we had a good time of food and fellowship. Everyone was there from the evening before,except for one young lady that attends church elsewhere, so we had one first timer and another young lady with us that hadn't been for a while. We are looking forward to the Lord doing great things here.
Please pray for one of my uncles, as he is in desperate need of the Lord and His help right now. Also, please pray for our mission in Evansville. I believe God is working in this area. Hopefully, I will have more information to put up concerning Evansville after this weekend.

Sad prayer request

I just received word today of a tragic situation which desperately needs prayer. A man who is friends with one of my sister's in-laws had a daughter that was brutally murdered either today or yesterday I believe. The woman had filed for divorce from her husband and he slit her throat in front of their four year old child. He then took the child and purposely wrecked a vehicle in an attempt to kill both of them. From my understanding the child is ok, but the father is in bad shape. Please pray for this man that he would have the opportunity to give his heart to the Lord before he would die, and that the Lord would help all of the family involved in this.

Bonfire

Well, we had a bonfire at church tonight. Other than our regulars we had three others with us. One of them, a young man, was his first time coming to anything. He plans on coming in the morning to service as well. One of the others is supposed to be there in the morning as well.
We had a pretty good time. The fire was pretty big at first, when no one was there! By the time everyone got there it had died down pretty good, but you still had to be pretty committed if you were going to cook a hot dog on it. I took the approach of switching hands back and forth while turning my face to the side to shield it from the heat. On the second one I ate, I cheated and just cooked it on the flames from the stove inside. A little later, we played flashlight tag. I was "it" first. I found everyone and had one of the boys left to find. I wouldn't have found him, except he was in a tree and by the time I found everyone else, he had gotten tired and started moving around a bit to switch the pressure of holding himself up. It just so happened that I was walking by at that particular time.
Well, if you read this between Sat. night and Church Sun. Morning, please say a prayer for us that we will have good SS, morning service, and fellowship dinner afterwards. We are expecting a number of visitors.

May God bless you in your endeavors for Him.

Diane's Here!

My sister Diane got here last Sat. night. My mom didn't know she was coming this soon and she surprised her at church Sun. morning. We are glad to have her here for the next couple of months. Please keep her husband, Kevin, in your prayers as he is currently in Iraq.
We had a good trip to Evansville last Sat. It was good to see the Loyas. We had a good time with them. The scenery along the way was pretty good as well, with all the fall foliage.
Tomorrow we will be having a bonfire/cookout at the church. We are looking to have a pretty good turnout. Then on to Sunday with the Thanksgiving dinner after church. We should have a pretty good turnout for that as well. I believe that God is helping us. We ran into two different people at Wal-Mart this evening that are planning on trying to be there Sunday. Please pray for us that the Lord will help us to be in the middle of His will.

May you work without growing weary for Christ

?

I didn't really know what to put as a title, so anyways. Had a relatively good week last week. It was nice to be able to sleep in with my girls two Saturdays in a row. Of course, sleeping in always makes the rest of the day seem short! I fixed pancakes again this week. Anna seems to have trouble getting much of the pancake into her stomach. Some of it does get in her mouth, but invariably much of it makes it to the floor, her highchair, or her hair! Part of the problem probably is that she gets her cereal and fruit(I think) before the pancake, so she is probably in more of a playing mood than eating mood. She does like the taste though.
We had a good service at the Mission in Indianapolis last night. It seems like I normally preach longer when I am there than here at the local church. At any rate we had a good service which I am thankful for.
Also, on Sat. afternoon, we went to Apple Works, one of the local orchards, with Anna's big "sister", my mom, and my sister. It was a good thing to because the people who have the animals there for the petting zoo were there to take them home. So we made it on the last day they were there. All of us had a lot of fun. Thankfully, this time we took Anna's wide wheeled wagon, instead of the thin-wheeled stroller. Much easier on the person providing the umph for the transportation.
Well, I guess that's all for now. Pray for me if you think to. I have been fighting off some sickness for a few days now. Tonight I began to cough a lot and my voice is almost gone.

May God bless you as you seek a deeper walk with Him

Thank the Lord!

First I want to say, Thank you Lord, that when Kelley fell this morning at church she did not get hurt any worse than she did. She slipped on the frost on the ramp up to the door at church. At the time I was leaning into the car to get Anna, and heard something and then turned around to find her on the ground, not really moving. I left Anna in the car, and then ran over to Kelley. Shortly after I ran over there she began saying that she was going to pass out. Then she was gone. I don't know how long she was out, but I think it was at least a minute or two. Finally, she came back to, and I was able to carry her inside and set her down. I went back out and got Anna, and then we just kind of sat there for a few minutes. Kelley was still feeling weird and hurting, but eventually got to feeling better. Thankfully, she just scrapped her knee and elbow a little, with a few more aches I guess. How she got the scrap on her knee without ripping or running her hose I'll never know. Now she is just fine, just a few aches and pains.
Secondly, I thank the Lord for the good reports that I have heard concerning the work here in our region. One new area, in which we currently don't have a church, and new contacts where we are currently trying to operate a mission!

May you never give up the good fight of faith.

Urgent Prayer Request!!

Everyone please pray for Bro. Isaac Thomas Admivunkal's wife. She is having complications after a C-section. The baby is fine, but she is have some difficulties. Please pray for her.

Full Week

Well, we have had a full, but good week. I had to work a lot of hours last week, including a little while Sat. but we were able to get in some family time. Friday was Kelley and I's 5 year anniversary. We are thankful to the Lord that He has enabled us to have a good marriage. It is something that takes a lot of work, as anyone who has lived with me could tell you. The church celebrated by giving us some cards and cake. We especially enjoyed the card that Sis. Jernigan made for us. She always sends/gives such wonderful cards. We really appreciate all of the time and love that she puts into them.
Saturday after I got off of work we went to a local orchard called "Apple Works". They have a very beautiful place there and we love going there. They have a small petting zoo, but Anna wasn't very interested in the animals. She was more interested in the people taking care of them. They also, among many of the food offerings there, have pumpkin cake donuts that we just love. We gave Anna some small pieces of on and her facial expressions were hilarious. She seemed to like them, but her face would scrunch up because she is not used to the spices.
Sunday Evening we were glad to have a visit from Bro. & Sis. Jernigan. After service, we had a fellowship with some of the above mentioned pumpkin donuts as well as some apple cider donuts, and apple cider. We had some good discussion during our BTI lesson before service.
Well I started this post on Monday and am just now finishing is up! Anna has learned how to operate her walker fairly well. She keeps running into Kelley in the kitchen and has also learned how to open cabinet doors! It seems as if that child learns something new every day.

May God bless you as you work for Him.

Wonderful Ministers' Convention!

I thank the Lord for a wonderful Ministers' Convention. It started off, Friday night with a banquet for the pastors and coordinators, which was prepared(to my understanding) by the ladies from the Elizabethtown, KY church. It was a wonderful time of food and fellowship. Then Saturday morning the convention commenced. The Spirit of the Lord was definitely present in a mighty way. Bro. Kevin Brown was on schedule to give a 10 min. sermon. I don't know if it was only ten minutes or not, but it was definitely anointed as he spoke to us about walking with hope. I don't have the scripture text with me right now, but he did a great job of following the leading of the Holy Ghost. Later on in the morning Bro. Micheal Jernigan preached a great message as well with his text being from 2 Kings 2. He spoke of how we needed to have the anointing of God. How that we can not live off of the anointing of saints in the past, just as Elisha had to receive his own anointing from God, and could not rely on Elijah's anointing, because Elijah was gone on. It was a good reminder that we need to be seeking the Lord for the kind of anointing that those that have gone on before us had, and even a greater anointing. There were many times throughout the course of the convention that the Spirit of God fell mightily. I, quite frankly, wasn't in much of a hurry to go to lunch, just enjoying the moving of the Spirit.
Well, guess I better get off here. Still have things to do before tomorrow morning and I do need some sleep eventually. Please be in prayer for our Children's Day that we are planning. We are having a meeting tomorrow to talk about this and other upcoming event(s) tomorrow to get everything lined out. We want to minister to our community through God's anointing.

May you walk WITH and IN hope on this journey for the Lord!

Wow!

I just want to thank the Lord for a great Sunday of services. Especially Sunday night. The Holy Ghost poured out on us and there was just a hunger present for winning souls. We prayed for a number of people who need to be saved. We are trusting the Lord that we will see these prayers come to fruition. I believe that the desire of our local church is to be winning lost souls to Christ, as well as ministering to those souls where they are at. Please pray for us as we strive to reach a lost and dying world to Christ.

May you be encouraged in your work for the Lord.

New Regional Website!

Our region now has a website here. It is still in the work in progress stage, but drop by and check it out. I am sure Bro. Shane would appreciate any feedback you could give him.

Weekend

Well, we had a busy weekend.
Saturday, I went to Evansville. Had a good time with the Loyas. Even though I got off to a rough start. The first thing I did was lock my keys in the car! So, we spent about thirty minutes getting the doors unlocked. Everything went pretty good after that though. Right before I left we went and checked out a place to rent for services. We were able to get it at an agreeable rate. The man we will be renting from is a friendly, mostly baptist(as he described himself) older gentleman that definitely does not look his age. It is across town from where the Loyas currently live, but just a couple of miles away from where they used to live. We are planning to start having services there the next time I go down, towards the end of October. Please pray that they will be able to make it to the ministers' convention. They have not be able to make it out to any of our church events over the past year, and would really enjoy the fellowship and encouragement.
Sunday went pretty well also. I did find out that a member in Sturgis, KY passed away Sat. Please remember Bro. Leroy's family. He was almost always at all the conventions and retreats with his guitar and amp, always ready to play music. I know that he will be missed by a great many people.
We had dinner and fellowshipped with some old friends tonight. We stopped by Sat. and spent some time with part of the family. But all of the family was there tonight.
Please pray for our local church. I was wanting to have a VBS this year, but we were unable to due to time constraints before school started. However, I have recently gotten the idea to do a children's day on a saturday. I haven't gotten much worked out yet, but I believe that we could be a blessing to the children in our community.

May God bless you as you work for Him

Anna Videos

The following are two videos of Anna. One is of her crawling. The other is her finding out what "Cheerios"(or at least the Walmart equivalent) are. She does not quite understand how to eat them yet.

One more week behind us.

Thank the Lord for helping us make it through this week. I have been working more than I like in my secular job, thus limiting my time in other areas. But the Lord will help me. I reached the quarter century mark this past week. Thursday I turned 25! Wow, I am getting old! HAHA!! I didn't get home until 6:30 and then had to get ready for church. I got there about 10 min. late because I got a little side tracked. After service they had cake and ice cream for me. So it turned out alright.
Yesterday I had a little bit of relaxing time. We went to Kelley's grandparents. While everyone else watched football and talked,I just curled up with a book. Also, some friends of ours from out of state were in town and stopped by to see us for a little while. It was good to see them since we hadn't seen them for about two years.
This morning we had a young lady show up that hadn't come for quite a while. She had come to a couple of services with her daughters a few months back, but we hadn't seen her for a couple of months and had been unable to reach her at home when we tried to stop by and visit. She showed up unexpectedly this morning with her son. The girls were with some other family members, but it was good to see her after all this time, especially since we had changed locations. Kelley had sent her a card last week so we thank the Lord for the positive result.
I feel that we had a good service tonight. I started things a little different as I jumped straight into preaching after the opening prayer. I felt lead to preach on worship and felt that it would be best to cover it, before we actually got into worshiping. It seemed that everyone received it well. We are looking to see great things this year. To God be all of the praise, honor, and glory. Amen.

Equality

One thing that I believe is especially good in The Church of God is the equality that there is. One example is the Operation Banner of Love that I referred to in my last post. Another thing that made me think of this is a bookmark. How does a bookmark do that you ask? Well, our missionary leader got the mission ladies bookmarks at the assembly. They were bought from the mission table to raise money for missions. They were made, along with at least one other thing(a beautiful, I'm told, table cloth), by the ladies of the Church in North India and sent with their overseer to be sold at the mission table to raise money for missions. This made me make a correction in my mind. Generally, when I think of raising money for missions, I think of people in the US raising money and sending it abroad. But, that is not how things work in the Church. We all work together to accomplish the mission that Christ has given us, reaching the lost for Christ. So the question is, am I doing my equal part, are you doing your equal part? Lord help each of us to truly ascribe to equality and do our part to reach this world.

Long Day!

We left about 7:00 a.m. and got back some time about 6:30 p.m. We did have a good visit with the Loya's though. It had been since back in March since Kelley had gotten to go with me to see them. They seem to be doing pretty well. I went down with the intent to search around for some different places we might be able to rent for services, and it turns out Bro. David knows some one who has built a small church that might work out perfectly for us. It is back in the Newburgh area, where they used to live before, on the other side of Evansville from them now, but we will see what the Lord will work out. Please pray that the Lord's will would be done as we are looking forward to doing more work in Evansville this year. We have another member of the church that has moved into the area as well. So we would like to get something going very strongly. I believe that having a place to meet other than a home would help out a lot. At least it seems to have here.
Anna has done very well this week and did especially good today while traveling. In addition to saying "momma" last Sunday evening during service, she is trying to start crawling. Yesterday, she finally figured out how to get her knees underneath her, so I figure it is just a matter of time before she really takes off. She already rolls and turns circles like crazy.
Hope you have a good service tomorrow morning!

Banner of Love

I would just like to say thank you to all who have raised money for the Banner of Love program. Thanks to it, we now have a large church flag to put in our church. We received it in the mail yesterday. When the program began, and possibly even still now, many people probably just thought of churches overseas not having a flag because of finances, but the program is being a blessing to our church. We are not destitute or anything, but the finances that we have are going towards just having a place to worship, and the upkeep on it. So it has been a blessing to receive a flag without having to wonder where to cut a corner somewhere else. It came to me, during the assembly sometime, that possibly we would be able to get a flag thru the program, but I did not feel that I should say anything. The Lord worked it out that I didn't need to ask. Our overseer asked one of our members if we had a flag. Upon discovering that we didn't, he said that he would look into getting one for us. It is wonderful to know that in this world-wide church we are all the same. If there is a need we work to fill it, whether the local congregation be here in Franklin, South Africa, Colombia, or India. Please pray for us that we can be a blessing to others, as others have been a blessing to us.

Baby Girl is growing up!

Well, Anna said her first word Sunday Evening during church while I was preaching. I didn't hear it but apparently she said "mama." Now since she has discovered that she can do it, she is often doing it nonstop. She is also moving around all over the place. She is not crawling yet, but rolls, and twists and turns almost constantly. It seems as if every new day she is doing something new. Where does the time go?

Back healed!

I forgot to mention that the Lord touched my back at the Assembly Friday night. I have been having bad problems with it and the Lord touched it. Thank you Lord! I don't have the time to mess with any back problems. God still heals!

More Assembly Notes

During Bro. Smith's Annual Address, he gave the following information:
As of the last reports for the Church,

18,782 members - an increase of over 500+
1202 ministers- an increase of 235
567 Churches
45 countries
39 states in the US
Organized in 4 new countries this year.

I felt that this was a good report due to everything the church has been dealing with the past few years.

EVANGELISM- It seems that this was a major focus during the GA this year. I am glad to hear everyone focused on winning souls. It is what I have been trying to encourage the local church here to do consistently. During the past month and a half we have had 2 people that attend our church to get saved. Neither of them in one of our local services, but I can definitely see God moving. We had a wonderful Sunday School and Morning service the Sunday we left for the Assembly. I am looking forward to what God has for us tomorrow. I just received word that a young lady that we have not seen for a while is supposed to be at church tomorrow. She loves coming to church, but due to some situations beyond her control, is often unable to. Please pray that things will open up for her to be able to attend more often. Also, the young lady that got saved last fall, my cousin, will be getting out of jail soon. Pray that she will be able to stand strong against the attacks of the devil.

JESUS-This seemed to be one of the other main focuses of the assembly. I loved Bro. Byers message on the Corner. It is certainly true that everything that we need is in the Cornerstone-Jesus.

If things will work out soon, I will try to pull some highlights off of the DVD's from the assembly and put them up on Youtube.

God bless, and let's reap the harvest for Jesus.

Couple of new(to me) websites

I was recently made aware of two church websites.
One is for The Church of God in the Philippines

The other is The Church of God in Mexico
The Mexico one is in Spanish, but if you click around you will find lots of wonderful pictures of the saints there is Mexico.

Quick post

Don't have time for a long post, but I just wanted to say what a GREAT assembly we had. The Spirit of God was present in a mighty way and moved wonderfully. In addition, I would request that you please pray for Ron Legg. He had to be taken to the hospital at some point during the week and is in need of prayer.

Good things!

Just wanted to thank the Lord for the donation of 4 new banquet tables and a sweeper to the church here at Franklin. In addition, we were able to raise a little over $200 dollars at a yard sale Friday. We took a little break this week, not really working on the building after being at it for about two months. Hopefully, I will get back to working on a few of the things this next week, if I get time. We are looking forward to the General Assembly. It will be good to see everyone, and will be wonderful to see what God has in store for us.
We had a good service this morning. Our WMB leader gave a good boost and devotion. She pointed out the objectives of the WMB. One, to train the young women, went right along with our Sunday School lesson on the christian woman. She also pointed out how that we may not be able to do much monetarily as a small church, but when our work is put together with everyone else's it adds up.

Baptism Pictures

Some of the church people before the baptism.



Ashley being baptized.

First Service at New Place.

Today we had our first service at our new location. We didn't get everything done beforehand that we wanted to but things still looked pretty good. We had 19 in Sunday School this morning. After service we had a baptism service. We had one young person that got saved and sanctified at youth camp and needed to be baptized. We are looking forward to God doing many marvelous things in the near future. Hope fully I will have some pictures up later.

Short Camp Report

Thank the Lord for a great camp. I was unable to attend but am hearing good reports. We had 53 in attendance I believe. During the course of camp there were 12 saved, 10 sanctified, 3 filled with the Holy Ghost and 1 healing. One of those saved and sanctified is one of our VLB's here from Franklin. We are thrilled to hear that she got saved and sanctified and can't wait for them to get home to hear more about camp.

Urgent Prayer Request!!

Please pray for our dear friend Jessica Castle. She lost her husband late last night/early this morning. He was 33 years old and leaves behind a wife and a toddler son. Please pray that God will comfort them during this difficult time.

Free(almost) building painting

Just wanted to thank the Lord for supply two men that plan on painting our building for us for free. The paint had already been supplied by someone, so all that we have to purchase is some caulking and a few boards for trim and replacement. This is a big relief for us as I don't know that we would have had the time to get it done before our opening service.
In other news, one of our members granddaughters got saved today. It was at her family's local church, not here at ours, but we a glad to hear that she got saved. One more soul added to the kingdom.
Youth camp is coming up this week, and I want to thank the Lord for making the way for one of my sister's friends that has attended here some to go. She wanted to, but was waiting on permission from her mom, and we found out today that she got permission. Praise the Lord! Pray for our youth camp that everyone there would come back more on fire and established in their relationship with the Lord.
Well, I guess that is all for now. God bless each of you.

Postponed!

We have had to postpone our opening day at our new location until the first Sunday in August. Due to me working overtime, and some other things, we have been unable to get all of the renovations done that we wanted and some that we needed to before beginning to have service there. Please pray for us as we finish the renovations.
Also, pray for my wife's grandmother. She is in her 80's and it appears that she will be leaving this world soon. She is whole-heartedly in love with Jesus and ready to go, but it will be hard on the family.

May you not grow weary in your work for the Lord!

Convention Addendum

Just forgot to mention that I thank the Lord for 108 registered at our convention this past weekend.

Great Convention

We just got back this afternoon from a great convention. The Spirit of the Lord was present in a mighty way. We had great times of worship and singing, wonderful, anointed messages, and good times of fellowship as well. It was great to see the Smith's and the Risch's. They were such a blessing. Last night was especially good as the Holy Ghost came down in a mighty way during the evening service especially during and after Sis. Sharon Griffin's message. God is just so good.
Please pray for us as we work to get into our building this week. We still have a lot to do, but are trusting in the Lord to help us get it done. That is one thing that was impressed upon me at the conv. this weekend is to trust in the Lord and not in myself. I try to trust in Him always, but I guess that sometimes when it comes to getting things done physically, that I try to just take care of it myself.
I will try to get up some pics later of the conv.

May God bless you richly,

Good Saturday

Well, I had a good Saturday. My brother and I went down to the church to work on things for a while. I had to mow the grass again. It is growing so fast! I just worked on mowing it Tues and Wed. Thankfully, the neighbor came down and told me to use his riding mower. So, I was able to get it all mowed in just a few hours.
Saturday night I went to the mission in Indianapolis. We had a good service. There were about 75 men present. Twelve came to the altar and prayed at the end, with the Lord working with one man especially. There were several that indicated that they had been blessed during the service. I was hoping that there would be at least one get saved, but the Lord knows what the needs were there. Some of the men there I can't ever remember them not being there. We have been conducting services for them for several years now and some of them always seem to be there. Others though, have come and went, able to get past that stage of there life. Only by the grace of God that each of us is not in that same situation. Homeless and possibly even hopeless(in the sense that they feel they have no hope).
Well, we shall have a busy couple of weeks ahead getting ready for Regional Convention next weekend and the first service at the new place in two weeks. We still have a lot to do, but with everyone pitching in and with the Lord's help we will get everything needed done in time. We are also going to have a yard sale for the church the Thurs. and Fri. before we have the first service there. So pray that we are able to raise some funds through that as well.
I had a good visit with the man that owns that house next to us. He actually lives about a mile from where our building is at. He pretty much said everything but actually promising to come down to the new location for church. He seemed real positive that he would come by. Please pray for the young lady that has been coming with her twin girls. That she will continue to be encouraged in her walk with the Lord. Last week she also mentioned about some friends of hers in Alabama that had their 22 month old child that drowned. So please keep them in prayer as well.

May you be encouraged to continue working for the Lord.

Productive week

I forgot to mention that last Sat. I went to Evansville again. It had been almost two months since I had been there. This time, all of the Loyas were there, thankfully. Last time I went Sis. Loya was working, so it was good to see everyone. We had a good time visiting, and they really seemed to get into the Sunday School lesson. They have two families, that I know of, that they are wanting to invite to services. One spanish and one american family. So please pray for the work in this area, that we can see some fruitful results.
I have been able to work down at the church, the first three days this week. I was able to get some work done outside, mainly mowing and trimming brush and trees. We got a lot of the trees and branches burned yesterday. I also got most of the drywall work done inside. Just two more pieces to put up over where a door used to be. It looks like we will be having a yard sale to raise money for the church the weekend after our Regional Convention. This is the weekend that I would like to begin having services there as well. We will see how it goes. Had another donation to the church from a guy at work this week. Just walked up and handed me the money out of the middle of nowhere. May God bless him for his generosity. Hope to be able to have a productive next couple of days, and really make some progress on the building before the beginning of next week.

May God bless you and you work for Him.

Regional Convention Program

For anyone who is interested, our Regional Convention Program is available on our church website here

I can't wait to get to the new building!

This morning we were blessed to have 17 in Sunday School. Our visitor from two weeks ago returned with her daughters. The twins are beginning to warm up to everyone. We had two regulars out of town and one other person that could have been here. So, with the three out of town visitors, if our other ones had been here, we would have been pretty crowded. Our sanctuary now can hold about 20-22 packed. So we are anxiously looking forward to being in our new place. We are now hoping to make it in there in about three weeks. Hopefully, this week I will be able to make it down there and get some work done. We especially need the extra SS classrooms. We are really needing to split our children's class. Currently, we are doing two lessons in the same room at different times. Everyone have a good evening service and good week.

May God bless you

3 websites

I found three new(to me) TCOG websites today.

England
Vidor,TX
East Africa

Sad day-Glad day

Sad day-
Today, one of the finest was laid to rest. For any who don't already know, Bro. Damon Broyle's funeral was today. He passed away this week, leaving his wife Kasey. We are thankful to know that he is on the other side in glory, not having to deal with the asthma that took his life anymore. While we are sad at his passing, we can rejoice knowing that this kind, loving soul has received his reward. Please keep his wife in your prayers.
Glad day-
God is continuing to bless us as we received another donation to our building fund in the mail today. While the money is helpful, the most encouraging thing about this is that God is working on the hearts of people who are not members to help out our church. It seems that God just continues to encourage and bless us. I can't wait for tomorrow to see what God has in store.

In other news, the young lady that got saved last fall, was not released from prison yesterday like she was supposed to be. Due to some technicalities, beyond her control, the judge decided not to release her. Please pray for her as she writes to the judge and tries to get things straightened out. She recently completed her 3rd BTI correspondence course and is awaiting her next one. One of our members visited her today and she is doing well, despite the disappointing news received this week.

Continued blessings from the Lord

I just want to thank God for what He is doing. It seems that He just keeps working continually on behalf of the church here in Franklin. In addition to our visitors Sunday, we received a call this week from someone who had received a postcard from us about the church and is interested in attending.
Kelley, my wife, had made these post cards and had been sending them out to people whose addresses she finds in the phone book. This is the first call that we have gotten from them being sent out. Please pray for this lady who contacted us. She has many things pressing on her right now and needs strength and help from the Lord. She was glad that we have morning and evening worship services as well as midweek service. Additionally, today someone handed me $50 towards the church. I was totally surprised as it was completely unsolicited. I was having a conversation with the gentleman, looked away for a moment and when I looked back up he had money in his hand shoving it my direction.
We are continuing to work on our new building. Slowly, but surely we are making progress. It has been hard for me to get much done this week because I had to work over three nights.
May God bless you in your work for HIM

3 new visitors!

This morning we were blessed with 3 visitors. A young lady and her two daughters who have recently moved back to the area. She happened to see one of our members in Walmart last night and said that she would definitely be at church in the morning, and she was! God was definitely directing things. She said that what was said this morning was what she needed to here, and she plans on being back regularly. We thank the Lord for what He is doing.
This Friday, my cousin that got saved last fall, will be released on house arrest for the next three months. She will be unable to come to church, but we will be able to visit with her much more easily. Pray for her that she can remain strong in her faith in the Lord during this time and that we will support her in every way we can.
Thirdly, we would like to be in our new location in about 3 weeks, before our regional convention. Unfortunately, I have had to work some over time lately that has hindered me working on the place. But, we are still looking forward to getting in there. It will give us at least two more Sunday School rooms, which it appears that we need the extra space now, and especially will within the next month. We had 12 this morning, but had about 6 out for various reasons.
May God bless you as you work for Him!!!

Family Pic

Here is the family picture we had taken just before BTI. I finally got it scanned to update our church website and thought I would put it on here as well.

New Location!

Everything has worked out and we are currently beginning the renovations to our new property. I am planning on us being able to begin having services there sometime in July, either right before or right after our Regional Convention. We are excited to be moving forward in this new phase for our local church. Keep checking back and I will try to post pictures over the course of the next month as we make the renovations. I was going to take a full set of before and after pictures, but before I will be able to make it there tomorrow, some of the renovations will have already been started, but I will still try and get some to share.

Good things!

We had a good morning and evening service today. This morning we had 14 for Sunday School, and 19 for morning worship. We had some out of town visitors, but thankfully all but one of our regulars was here. We are seeing some positive things happen and the Lord is really blessing us. This evening there was a good spirit present in the service.
We talked about acquiring the property for the church, mentioned a few posts back, tonight before church and we have agreed that we want to proceed in this direction. I have to make a call tomorrow to the zoning and planning guy to make sure that I understood correctly what he meant on one question and to ask one more. If everything goes all right, we plan on being done with our renovations and ready for our opening service sometime in July, with VBS soon to follow.
We haven't had a VBS in at least 2 or 3 years, so we are going to need a lot of work and a lot of prayer that things will go smoothly. We are looking for great things from the Lord as we launch into the end of this convention year and the beginning of the next.
May God bless you in your labors for HIM!

Ain't God Great

Just wanted to put up a quick, THANK YOU LORD. We received a wonderful blessing in the mail today that was totally unexpected. God provides for our needs every step of the way.

Church Building

We here at Franklin have found a property which we are interested in buying for the Church. We can afford to get it, and have found out that it is zoned correctly for us to use now, but we are waiting on confirmation that we could expand it, or build a new facility in the future, without major rezoning issues. Please pray that everything will go smoothly for us.

General Assembly Building

Just in case anyone out there wanted to take a peek inside, I have uploaded a video that Bro. James Smith took of the inside of the building we are going to have the General Assembly at this year. It is short, only about 15-20 seconds so if you would like to see it you can just click here. There you will find a picture of the outside, as well as the video of the inside. Both of which are the courtesy of Bro. James Smith, our regional overseer in the North Eastern US. Thank you Bro. Smith.

Back from BTI

Well, we made it to BTI and back safely. We had a wonderful time while there. It was sad that some of our old friends were unable to make it this year for different reasons, but we made some new friends as well. Anna did real good on the drive down and on the drive back. On the way down, all of the driving was at night, so she slept the whole time except when she needed to be fed. We drove back during the day and were worried that she would have problems, but she did just as good as she did on the way down.
While at BTI, we were able to go look at where we will be having the assembly this year. IT is very nice, and I think it will work very well for us. Bro. Grayson should have some pictures up on the General website before too long.
Unfortunately, while we were there, my grandfather's brother got very sick, so they had to leave to go see him before he died, which he passed away yesterday, so we didn't get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked to. Please pray for my family during this time of loss.
It is good to be back home. Even though I have a lot of catching up to do. There have been some positive things going on here locally at the Church. A couple of our young people that we had not seen for a while have shown up this past week. One of them to two different services. Unfortunately, she will be out of town for the next month or so, but we look forward to when she will get back. Secondly, my cousin that got saved last fall will be able to get out of jail about three months sooner than expected. She will have some restrictions for a while, but hopefully she will be able to come to church. At the very least, it will be much easier for all of us to go and see her. Please pray for her that she will stay strong in the Lord.
Well, that's about all for now. May God bless you as you labor for Him.

Evansville

I forgot to put anything in my last couple of posts about my visit to Evansville Saturday. It was good to see everyone. Unfortunately, Sis. Loya had to work. The Loya's have been busy. They have only live where they are currently at for about 3-4 months I believe, and already had one neighbor asking for SS lit. and two more that they think are interested.

Showers of Blessing

I just want to thank the Lord for the wonderful things that He is doing for our local church. We had a wonderful service last night in which the Holy Ghost came down and blessed in a very special way. I am anticipating great things in the days, weeks, and months ahead.

In other topics, I now have a thumb licking daughter! She doesn't suck her thumb, she just licks it. I haven't seen anything like it before. I would put a link here to the video, but then realized I have it on myspace, which I don't know if you can view it without an account. I will try to upload it to Youtube sometime soon.

Hope that God is blessing you where you are at.

Zeal Level

What is your level of zeal about serving the Lord? Or about coming to church? Recently, we had someone attend our church, that does not get to very often, that woke up at 5 a.m. excited about coming to church! This person sent one of our members a text message at 5 a.m. because she was excited about coming to church! She was not just excited, but she wanted to let someone else know that she was excited. Is this how you feel about your Lord and Saviour? Is this how you feel about your local church? Lord, let us have this zeal. Help us to seek you until we feel your zeal well up within us.

Youth Convention

We had a great youth convention. The Holy Ghost came down in a wonderful way both days, and I believe that everyone there would say that they were blessed. There were 55 registered in attendance Friday night, and I know that many others came in Sat. so my best estimate is that we had between 70 and 80 total. It was wonderful to see everyone. But the best part was the moving of the Spirit. Sat. afternoon, we just had to let go of the schedule and do what the Lord wanted. Our theme was "The Call to Deliverance"(I hope I got that right) and deliverance was there in a mighty way. Friday night we were blessed by Sis. Sharon Griffin's message. Then Sat. morning Bro. Brian O'Dell preached an outstanding message. Following that Sat. afternoon, the Holy Ghost just moved among us in a mighty way. We are looking for great things to happen. Pray for us as we strive to reach our communities with the gospel of Christ. Also, pray for Kelley and I as we make preparations for BTI.

God bless

Good Services

Well, it has been over a week since I have posted so I figured that I should probably get around to it. I have been reading about great youth conventions going on across the country and am looking forward to ours this weekend.
In local news, we had some good services Sunday. We had some out, for various reasons, but the Spirit was present. I felt the Lord's guiding in both of the sermons. Sunday evening, I ending up falling asleep with Anna while I was intending on working on the message. I ended up waking up about 15 mins. before service, due to a phone call I think. But, God blessed and directed anyway. He never ceases to amaze me, how in my lack, He continually makes up the difference and more.
Sunday evening, I preached on how the blind men in the Bible, outside of Jericho, cried out to Jesus for Him to have mercy on them. The multitude then tried to quite them, but they refused to let Jesus pass by without receiving what they needed. They began to cry out all the more the scripture tells us. Then Jesus had compassion on them and healed them. Church, we must refuse to be silenced when crying out to Jesus. Let us cry out to Him, that He would take us deeper, and give us a burden for the lost souls out there. The harvest plenty, but the laborers are few. Oh Lord, help us to labor. Help us to cry out for the lost.

Great new notetaker

I found out about a great new way to make note of ideas,thoughts, etc. Jott is a mobile note taker. You sign up and then can use your cell phone, or I guess any phone for that matter, to leave yourself a note. The software transcribes the message that you leave and sends you an email with the details. You can also use it to send emails. It is free, so I figured why not try it out. I have only used it twice, just as tests. The first time it worked great, the second not so great. But, in defense of Jott, the second time I was on my bluetooth, driving down the road, and sometimes people have trouble understanding me in that situation. So, if your forgetful, give it a try.

Random things

Well, since Kelley finally let her work know, I can let it out that she is quitting her job. Her last day will be the day before we leave for BTI. It is something that she has prayed about and struggled with for a while. We feel that this is what will be best for our family.
We got a new computer last week. My old laptop is about 6-7 years old and starting to show it. We did have a couple other computers here but they were Kelley's for work, so since she is quitting we won't have them here any more. So we got a new(to us) laptop. We decided to go the refurbished route as they were much, much cheaper than the brand new. We got one with a small screen that is very light(when detached from it's docking station).
Back before Anna arrived, and even afterwards, it seemed to me that we had an awful lot of bibs. Like more than we could ever use. I mean we literally have around 50 bibs. All until the past week. She has started spitting up quite frequently. Sometimes a little, some times a lot. So, I am starting to rethink the whole bib thing. Especially after being at some friends house the other night who have a baby about 5 months older than Anna.
Also, check out www.tcog-ne.org. Bro. Smith, the overseer for the Northeast Region in the U.S. recently got their regional website up and running. You can see pictures of the local church buildings and read their regional paper, among other things.
Well, enough randomness for now. God bless.

Anna's Song

The following is the song that Anna's Uncle J(my brother Jeremiah) wrote and composed for while they were waiting at the hospital for her to be born.


As we sit here tonight
Waiting for your wonderful sight
As we wait patiently
Thinking about how great you will be
What will we do once we see you?

We will love you
We will adore you
We would do anything for you
We will love you
We will adore you
We would do anything for you

As we see her go through pain
Just for your gain
It has seemed like a typhoon
She only hopes it ends soon
What will she do once she sees you?

She will love you
She will adore you
She would do anything for you
She will love you
She will adore you
She would do anything for you

As we watch him pace
With that nervous face
As some hoped for a boy
He is only filled with joy
What will he do once he sees you?


He will love you
He will adore you
He would do anything for you
He will love you
He will adore you
He would do anything for you

Now that you're here
Lend me your ear
Just so you know
No matter where you go

We'll always love
We'll always adore you
We'll do anything for you
We'll always love
We'll always adore you
We'll do anything for you

More Easter and Dedication Pictures

If you would like to see more pictures, just go here. It is a whole lot easier for me to upload the pictures to our church's photo album, than to upload them to blogger.

Dedication Pictures

Us and my grandparents

Kelley and her parents and grandmother.

Bro. Cox conducting the dedication

Baby Anna in her dedication gown and bonnet that my mother crocheted for her.

Easter Morning

We had a good service this morning with 35 in attendance. There was a good spirit there. We had a number of people that were family, visiting just for the dedication, but there were also a number of non family visitors there as well. Please pray for us that we can continue to reach out to the community.
The baby dedication went well. "Poppy" did a good job with the dedication and my brother and sister did a good job performing the song that he(my brother) wrote for Anna. I am going to put up some pictures on our website, and will hopefully have a link to a video of the dedication and morning service as soon as I get the DVD of it from our camera guy. Hope that things went good at your Easter service.
Well, can't really think of anything else to say at the moment and I need to get everything set up for service tonight as well as prepare for it.

Upcoming Easter Services

Hope that everyone out there is doing great. As you all know Easter Sunday is coming up this week. At our local church we are having a Baby Dedication for Anna as well. Due to this fact, we are expecting a large number of people to be in service Sunday. I would ask that everyone pray for me and the local church as we prepare for this service. We are renting out a local auditorium so we will be having to move a lot of our sound equipment and church supplies for Sunday, in addition to trying to make sure that we have enough programs, Sunday School lessons, etc. for all of the visitors. Please pray that everything would go smoothly. Also, pray that the Spirit will be present and moving in a mighty way. Many of the visitors will be saved people, but a good number present will be unsaved as well. Please pray that we can demonstrate the love of Christ and that we would see some saved. I am believing the Lord for great things.
May God bless you in your endeavours for Him.

Good Service

I want to thank the Lord for a good service this morning. Kelley was prayed for during Sunday School and by the end of service let us know that God had healed her. I felt encouraged of the Lord and His prescence was with us.
We had two birthdays at our local church this past week. One was one of our gleaners turning 12. We had cake Tues. evening for both of them and I presented the new VLB, Emily Cox, with a certificate stating that she was officially inducted from the Gleaner Band to the Victory Leaders Band. I also gave her a VLB member card.
Sat. night we had a youth pizza and a movie night. Unfortunately, not as many showed up as we had planned on, but we had a good time anyway. We watched, "Facing the Giants". I would highly recommend this movie to anybody to watch. If you hadn't heard about it, it was filmed by a church in Georgia with an all volunteer cast. They filmed it with somewhere around $60,000-$100,000 and it ended up being picked up by a major studio and shown in theaters across the US. There is absolutely nothing objectionable in it. It is all about having faith in God and praising Him no matter what. It is the second time that Kelley and I watched it and I kept getting all kinds of sermon ideas out of it. One of the main points ended up being what I was going to preach on this morning. I had forgotten all about that part of the movie, but it helped confirm to me what the message should be about this morning. Then God confirmed it throughout the morning!
The weather up here has been great the past several days. Other than a lot of rain. It has been pretty warm. I love the spring, because then I can get out and start planting. Lord help me plant more spiritual seed this year as well.
Pray for us as we gear up for our Easter Service. In addition to our normal service, we will be having Anna's baby dedication afterward. We expect there to be a good number of people so we have rented a local auditorium for the morning service. Please pray that everything goes smoothly with all the visitors, setup and tear down, and that we will see souls saved!

Hope God is blessing where you are at!!

District Convention!

I just want to thank the Lord for a wonderful district convention. The Spirit was present in a mighty way. We experienced wonderful worship services as well as good preaching. At the very end of the convention we had one lady join the Church. We had 52 people registered, with 50 of those present Sat. Night. I meant to take pictures but was in an awkward place to get the ones I wanted Sat. night and then didn't get it done Sun. either. Oh well! If you would like to read more about it, I will be posting a report on our local church's website later today hopefully.
Last night, we cancelled our evening service, so Bro. Cox and I went and visited a local church that he has been associated with in the past. The people there were very loving. They didn't have a piano player, so I played piano with them during the worship service. Then they asked Bro. Cox to sing and following that asked me to sing. One thing that I noticed was that they seemed to be wanting to worship. They really didn't seem to be worried too much about how long they were there. Bro. Cox has preached for them in the past. Please pray that we continue to have an open door there as they currently do not have a pastor, and have not had one for a number of years. Pray that we can be a blessing to them whenever we get the opportunity to be in service with them.
Since beginning this post(several hours ago, got busy and walked away and forgot about it), I have learned that a dear friend has lost their father last night. Please pray for this family during this time, as the last that I knew he was not saved. I hope that since I have not spoken with them for some time that he had gotten saved in the interim. Please join me in prayer that God would provide peace during this time as this is the second family member they have lost within the past few months.

New Feature

Just wanted to let the few of you who read this occasionally know that you can now subscribe to this blog by filling out the email subscription form. It is located at the top left of the page. This will make it so that you don't have to come to this page to see if I have posted anything. Instead, it will be automatically sent to your email when I post. If everyone did this, it would save me a lot of time, since some of my friends, like me, blog sporadically. Hope this saves you some time. Or if you prefer you can prescribe in a reader.

God bless

Long Day

Well, I thank the Lord that He got us through the day safely. Today was little Anna's first of many all day travel for Church. We left for Evansville at 7:00 a.m. this morning to meet with the Loya's and have service with them. After arriving we spent some time visiting with them as I had not seen them in about 2 months and it had been longer for Kelley. Plus, this was the first time they had seen Anna. We read through the Sunday School lesson with them. We had one visitor, one of their son's friends who happened to stop by and wanted to play some basketball. Bro. David was quick to invite him to come to our upcoming District Convention as well as get him to stay for the Sunday School lesson. Bro. David and his family are very good and being outgoing and reaching out to the people around them. They are not afraid to invite people to church, no matter what the circumstances. Please pray for the work in this area. The one family that had shown a lot of interest is moving to Texas, so it has kind of been a little bit of a disappointment. But, I believe the Lord is working in other areas there in Evansville. I see good promise of things to come.
We were delayed leaving Evansville for a couple of hours due to a possibly bad situation, but thank the Lord after we left, we received a call letting us know that everything had turned out ok.
We then stopped to eat at a very good Amish Buffet Restuarant. They had the BEST homemade bread. And it went perfectly with all the other wonderful food they had. That is not even talking about all the desserts(peach cobbler, cherry cobbler, blackberry(I think) cobbler, as well as a number of different cakes, and several different kinds of pies.
We then headed down the road and stopped off at some friends' house, whom we had not seen for a number of months. It was good to spend time visiting with them.
Finally, we headed home and arrived at 10:00 p.m. That praying you did, Sis. Tammi, must have worked, because both Kelley and Anna did very good. There were a couple of times when I though Kelley would be ready to call it quits for the day, but she kept plugging along, and although tired, seemed to feel pretty good. Anna didn't fuss very much at all, until just a few min. before we got to our friends house, and for a few min. after we left their house. Hopefully, she can do just as good next weekend when we head back to S. IN for District Conv. and hopefully, to visit a few more friends if they are home.
Well, I guess, I better be done for now, and try to get to bed earlier than last night in case Lil' One decides that she wants to be up at 4:00 a.m. again.

Two sticks

In 1 Kings 17, there is the story of Elijah going to a widow, at God's
command, and as a result both Elijah, the widow, and her son were able
to survive a drought for many days. In this story we often talk about
God doing a miracle of producing many days worth of food on just a
handful of meal and a little oil. Oftentimes, I have though about how
small the cake would have been, but tonight, while Kelley was
preaching, as we read the verse something stuck out that really hadn't
before. The woman was gather TWO sticks to cook the cake, TWO. Now how
long could two burning sticks last? Not very long I would imagine.
Therefore, whatever she was going to cook had to be very small, to be
able to cook it with only two sticks.
I then began to think about
what a handful of meal is. As I ponder how much I can fit in my hand, I
come to the realization that it is not very much! And I have a fairly
big hand, one that iscomparatively large compared to most people I
know(with the exception of Bro. Forbes, his hand swallows mine). My
wife's hand is almost 1/2 the size of mine. I would imagine that this
woman's hand was much closer to my wife's than mine. This would shrink
the amount of meal even more.
As Kelley was preaching on our insufficiencies, this makes me think all the more on how even though the little that I have, if I just give it to God first, before I try to do anything with it, HE can do great things with it.
Some people might say that I am one stick short to have the fire that is needed, but with God's help I will accomplish all that He has for me to do. And you can too!

Visit

Thankfully, I will be able to start visiting my cousin again starting tomorrow. She just got saved last fall. She was moved a little over a month ago but is now able to have visits. Pray for her that she will stay encouraged and uplifted, throughout the rest of her time.

Goodbye Easy life!

Well, I guess that I can say goodbye to the easy life. And that is not just a reflection of newly becoming a father. For the past 4 1/2 weeks I have been laid-off from my secular day job. I received word today that I will be starting back Monday morning. In addition, at least 3 out of 4 of the next weekends I will have to be going out of town for at least part of the weekend. This weekend, we will be taking our first "long" trip since the baby. We will be headed to Evansville to have service and visit with the Loyas. It has been Dec. 30 since I have been there. We look forward to seeing them. This will be the first time that Kelley has gone with me. It will be Anna's first car ride over 45 min. Hopefully, if we time the feedings right, everything will go smoothly. We plan to meet up with some friends other than the Loyas as well. Afterwards, we are planning on stopping by some friends' house that we have not seen for several months. So, it will probably be a very tiring day for Kelley and Anna. It will be nice, in some ways, not to be driving for that long by myself. Please pray that we have a safe trip and that I don't drive Kelley crazy.
Over the next few weeks, we have district convention, a youth event at our house, possibly one more trip to Evansville for me, and possibly a trip to Cincinnati for a church event at our "adopted" family's church. I am also planning on ramping up my visiting. I have not done very good at getting out for a while.
All of this will be culminated by Easter. I anticipate having a large crowd because 1)baby dedication and 2)Easter. We will be renting an auditorium at a local college. This will create some extra work, ok actually a lot of extra work. But, I highly doubt we could fit everyone here at the house, where we normally have service. I still have to work out if we are going to have an Egg hunt and where to have it. Hopefully, I will get things ironed out with everyone tomorrow night as to whether or not we are going to have it. Then I can work Friday on making arrangements for it.
It is a shame that I have had all this time off and not gotten very much, if anything done, and now that I have to go back to work, everything needs to be done. Oh well, that's how it goes I guess.
May the Lord bless and keep you.

Smaller is better, sometimes!

It is said by those that know me that I am a reader. My dear friend and adopted father(after my father died) has said more than once that if you want me to know something, write it on a piece of paper and stick it in front of me. While the blogs that I love to read the most are my friends and others in the Church describing how God is working and blessing where they are, I do also read a variety of other blogs, spiritual and non-spiritual alike. I have found that the non-spiritual often have content that can be applied to the spiritual. One that I often read is one written by someone named Seth Godin. He is an author and speaker in the area of business. Many times the ideas he writes about, have applications in the spiritual sense, at least in my mind. The last two entries have made me think about a couple of different things.
The first that I came across was this one. It talks about how everyone wants to be in the big markets. Is this not true in our work in the Church? Everyone wants to have a large church. Now don't misunderstand, I know that God wants us to grow. And I by no means believe that God wants us to remain small. But, if you have a smaller church, it is insane to try and keep up with the mega churches. Our jobs are to work where we are at. A smaller church has many things to offer that I see no way a mega church can. One instance that I can think of is that in a smaller church if you miss a service, you are missed. In a church of thousands, how can one be missed? Now maybe there is something I am missing, but I just don't see how it can be done. I am not being critical of mega churches, just saying that smaller churches offer an intimacy that cannot really be duplicated in a mega setting. We must work where God puts us.
In one way, I don't see The Church of God ever getting to the point where this would be a problem. Our practice usually, is that whenever we get a large church, some people from that church start a new church in another location, thus making the previous congregation a little smaller, until it grows a little more. This creates many smaller centers of outreach in the middle of number of communities, instead of one large center in the middle of one community.
Another post that Seth had most recently, here, talks about companies hiding things that they feel consumers would not want to know. Do we ever do this in the Church? Do we ever gloss over things that we think would make people turn away? In his post, he goes on to say that people will eventually find out the secrets anyway. We know that this is completely true. This is biblical. So why waste time and energy hiding anything. It is useless, and if you are like me, you don't have time to waster. On top of that it would be hypocritical and dishonest. That is certainly not the first impression that we want to give people is it? Let us just focus on helping people and telling them about Christ. Let us just give them the truth.
Hopefully, I have made somewhat clear the track that these posts have made my mind follow. I have neither the time nor the space to explain in full, but hopefully this will spark something in your mind and heart as well.

God bless

Book Drive Success

As I mentioned in an earlier post, during the month of February, our local church conducted a book drive to raise books for children to read(or look at) while waiting to visit their parents or loved ones at a local jail. We were able to collect 30 books for which I am thankful for. I went today and dropped them off and was glad that we were able to make this donation. Since the last time I was there, it seems that the number of books had dimenished , and the ones there were in terrible disrepair. There only remained 5 books that did not have the covers torn off, pages ripped out, etc. I didn't know when I went if there was going to be enough room in the basket for those we collected, but by the time I removed all the damaged ones, there was enough room. Hopefully these books will provide these children moments of joy while they are there. Additionally, we put the name and contact information for the local church on the back of each one, so hopefully we will be able to minister to some families in this way as well.

District Convention

I just received the information for the Indiana/Ohio District Convention today. For more info go here.
The dates are March 17 & 18. It will be held in Elizabeth, IN.

Baby dedications

For reasons, obvious from my last post, as well as others, the topic of baby dedications has come up. It has been a while since we have had one here locally, and quite frankly my memory, for the most part, fails me. Can anyone out there help me with the details, such as before, during, or after a normal service. Basic description, ideas, etc. Any help would be much appreciated. The sooner the better. We plan on having Anna dedicated on Easter Sunday, but also have another baby here at the local church to be dedicated soon. Thanks everybody.

God bless

Anna Jobi

Here is one of my favorite pictures that we have of little Anna. She has wonderful bright eyes. She gave us a rough night last night only sleeping about 1 hour between 10:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Oh well, you take the good with the bad. It was her first night at home as well so, things will get better.

Anna has arrived

Just a short little post to let you know, our daughter Anna Jobi, finally arrived at 7:33 am, February 14. That's right a Valentine's Day baby. She is a real sweetheart! Thank the Lord, that even though everything didn't go quite as planned, everything turned out all right and both the momma and the baby are doing good.

Pipes Unfrozen!

For about the past week + our pipes have been frozen in our downstairs bathroom. The temp has not gotten above freezing for about 10-12 days I believe. Our toilet went first and then it kind of spread to everything else, thus necessitating us going to my mom and grandpa's to wash any clothes,etc. Thankfully, we still have an upstairs bathroom to use. Today, while we were at the hospital for Kelley to get checked, everything but the toilet unfroze. I had the water turned on so that when it began to unfreeze a little the water would start flowing and thaw the rest. By the time we got back it had basically went through all the water in our hot water heater. It is a good thing we got back when we did because the shower drain somehow had frozen and the shower was getting ready to overflow. After letting it drain a little and adding hot water, eventually it thawed out too.
It looks like the baby will be here this week. Kelley has been having relatively strong contractions since Friday(which incidentally, we spent a number of hours in a hospital that had a full maternity ward, was remodeling part of the maternity ward-no nursery that we could see anywhere, and had run out of pillows. Kelley had to lay on her back pretty much the entire time we were there, which caused her a lot of pain). Eventually, the doctor told her that it was just going to be a waiting game and that she could wait at the hospital or at home. We opted for home, since at the very least she could eat.
Sorry for the random, not very well punctuated format. Anyway now to start the second week of being off work. Hopefully, I will be able to get a number of things done. Yeah right! With the baby's arrival, I am sure that will all go out the window. Seriously though, I do have a project that I would like to get done at least a month before BTI, which would mean that I have about two months to go. This time off would be a great time to work on it, especially because as I work on it, I find more that needs to be added to it.
God bless! I hope that you are doing well!

One pizza at a time!

For a long time, I have wanted to be able to be a full-time minister for the Lord. It appears that now I will be able to, at least for a short while. Due to various circumstances, the weather and amount of work, I am going to be laid off for a little while. For how long, I do not know. The only thing that I am even close to being sure of is that it will be at least for two weeks, probably longer. I am towards the end of the first week now. So, I have freed up time. Pray with me that the Lord will help me use it to the best of His advantage. I would love for a miracle to happen and things work out so that I didn't have to go back. We are seeing good growth in our local church. Just tonight we had a second time visitor.
Anybody reading this is probably wondering what in the world all of this has to do with a pizza! Well, I found out today that my unemployment insurance is not going to work as we had hoped it would. That means a pretty good drop in money for us while I am off. Not a big deal, the Lord will bring us through. But, as I was clearing snow before church earlier this afternoon, our neighbor drove up made a quick stop at his house, and came back out. He came up to me and asked if we liked Pizza Hut(he works there). I told him that we ate there occasionally. He then proceeded to ask if we had eaten dinner yet. I told him no. He then offered to bring us a pizza. I told him that he didn't need to. He kept insisting, refering to a cake that Kelley had made a long while back that she had ended up taking to their house with a card inviting them to church. I finally gave in and told him sure. He asked what kind, and I said that cheese would be fine. He got off work at five and around 5:30 a knock at our door with the pizza. I asked if he had to pay for it. He said something about a discount and wouldn't take any money for it saying something about being neighborly or it being a neighbor thing. I thanked him and just figured it was a small little blessing from the Lord as a reminder that He is going to take care of us. What ever comes, I guess I'll just take it one pizza at a time:) If my neighbor happens to read this some how, Thanks! May the Lord bless you for blessing us!

Faith in Evidence

Oftentimes, we hear "famous" people talk about God, thank God for this or that, etc. Yet, it seems that just as often, they constantly do things which seem to cancel out any profession that they make.
Now, normally, I am not much of a fan of any kind of major league sports. With the local team finally making it to the big "Bowl"for the first time since they came to town, coverage has been everywhere you turn for the past two weeks. One thing that has really been getting a lot of coverage is the faith of these two men(the coaches). Dungy and Smith have genuinely, from everything that I can see are what they profess to see. I saw a quote from Smith from earlier last week saying that he doesn't smoke, drink, or dance. When his family made it down to Miami, they were going to celebrate with dinner. Dungy doesn't yell and make a big scene. Doesn't even swear. He happened to say that he was going to be on a certain sports show, whose name has a swear word in it. He was then asked the question, do you realize what you just said? He said, that's the last time you will hear that. I am glad that these men, putting the spotlight on faith, are who they profess to be.

Good Sunday Morning

We had a good Sunday Morning Service. It is cold, very cold out, with the wind chill below zero. I wondered if any would miss with it being so cold, but pretty much everyone made it. One of our young people didn't because the pipes at her house were frozen, from what I was told. Did I mention it was cold? We had an attendance of 14, which is pretty good. I am hoping that we can increase our average this month by the same percentage as last month. That would put us at 18. I can see it happening very easily. It seems that our youth group just keeps growing. We had one young person that came to our pizza party and then came last Sunday. She was here again this Sunday and it appears she is going to stay. She seems to be a very nice young lady. If God keeps blessing us and we keep working, we are going to run out of room soon. Pray for us to follow God as He leads us. I don't want to waste time worrying about crossing a bridge before I come to it, but I also want to be prepared. Thank you Lord for what you do!!! It may be cold and way below freezing outside, but it is warm in my heart today!

One more soul saved

Thank the Lord for one more soul on their way to heaven tonight. I preached at our once a month service at Wheeler Mission, a homeless shelter, in Indianapolis tonight. The place was packed pretty much near or beyond capacity because of the cold weather. Sometimes when preaching I walk quite a bit and I had what was probably at best, about a 10X6 section to move around in tonight. That area included a bible stand, microphone stand and an occasional foot or two from the audience. In behind the stand there was a few feet before the altar and in front not much more, if any, between it and the congregation. So I kind of felt boxed in. But the service was great. To start off someone requested a song as we were passing out songbooks and lo and behold I already had that marked to sing! I started out intending to preach on conviction and repentance, but preached on that a quite a bit more. God knew just what was needed though. At the altar call, I was exhorting on the fact that there was nothing to be ashamed of to come to the altar, but in fact more shame in staying in your seat. After the man came and gave his heart to the Lord, saying he didn't want to live the rest of his life with the condemnation, I announced that he had gotten saved and everyone started clapping. They were very enthusiastic! We then sang Victory in Jesus, as this man had just gotten victory! It is one of the favorites there so many of them know the words as well. We sang it through once and then I stood and we sang the chorus again without music. I could feel the spirit wonderfully in that place. By the time we got done singing the chorus, I really felt like preaching!!! But, it was time for them to start getting ready for bed. I just thank the Lord for one more soul saved and for His wonderful prescence tonight. I received a blessing as I am sure that a number did there as well. I thank the Lord that we have this open door of opportunity to preach the gospel there. We went once to fill in several years ago and they invited us to come on a permenant basis, of which we have tried to be there, with few exceptions, ever since.
We will be launching a book drive for the month of February at our local church. While visiting a convert in one of the local jails, I noticed that they had a basket full of books for kids in the waiting room. During the many times that I have been there, I noticed that a large number of the books, if not the majority, were in bad to horrible conditions. Covers were torn off, pages missing, etc. Seeing a number of kids there, I thought that this could be a way for the church to be of service to these people, providing something for the children, while reaching out at the same time. Though I had not gotten around to calling to jail, I had mentioned the book drive idea to our local mission leader. She let me know about a week and a half ago that she had called the jail, and that they were ok with us donating books, as long as we got rid of the torn-up ones. So, we are hoping to be able to get a number of books to donate during this next month. I am hoping and trusting that some soul(s) will be reached for Jesus through this. Hopefully we will be able to make a difference in some childrens' lives and through them, their parents' lives as well.
Pray for us as we continue to grow. As Bro. Donnie says, I have caught someone in the act of doing good. More on that in some future post. Needless to say, God is blessing us. I hope He is blessing you as well.

Greatly Encouraged

I thank the Lord for what He has been doing for us in Franklin. It seems that lately I am just more and more encouraged. I don't feel that I am doing enough for Him but it seems that He just is continually blessing us.
We are still waiting for the baby to get here. Kelley has been having contractions on a semi-regular basis for the past couple of days but we are going to wait until they are very consistent and very close before we even think about going to the hospital.
In church news, things are going very well. Last Friday night we had a pizza party for the youth and watched a movie, then afterwards played music for a little while. Even though I was sad that a few of our youth were not there, due to my own not checking everyone's schedule ahead of time, the ones that were there brought 3 new faces, which we were glad to have. One of those came to church Sunday morning. We ended this month with our SS att. ave. up 50% from last month. I am just looking forward to more wonderful things from God. Check back soon to see what wonderful things He is doing in our midst.

Long Sunday

Kelley and I started out Sunday morning very early. I think I woke up some time between 3:00 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. with her having contractions. She ended up having them for about twelve hours. So we spent about twelve hours at the hospital. We ended up missing the morning service, but they still had a good service from what I heard. We had a good attendance too. Her contractions stopped during the afternoon and they released us in time so that we got home about 30 minutes before church Sunday evening. Kelley was disappointed the baby didn't come, but it will come in the right time. It was a long day, but thankfully I didn't have to work today so I kinda was able to rest some today. Hopefully, the baby will come soon. I am hoping either in the next day or two, or that it would wait until Sat. We have a youth event scheduled Fri. and as it is hard to schedule stuff, especially for one of our youth who plays basketball, I would rather NOT have to reschedule. Even though, if we had the baby Friday, some of the youth would end up at the hospital anyway. And I am not just talking about my brother and sister. We have one girl who just can't wait. Her birthday was today, and when she came to the hospital yesterday she was telling Kelley to wait until this morning to have the baby.
Thank the Lord for the wonderful things happening in the Church! Type some later.
Hope that God is blessing you where your at.

Great Sunday Morning

Thank the Lord for a great Sunday morning. It was cold and rainy out here and I was kind of wondering how attendance would be. You know how it goes, oftentimes when the weather isn't great we tend to not get out as much. But thankfully, this morning everyone came out. We had 14 in attendance this morning(15 if you count my little one to be born in the next couple of weeks :). We had a good Sunday School followed by a good morning service. I look forward to seeing what great things are going to happen in the next few months. It appears that there is a very good chance that we will be hitting the 20 mark in the very near future. If you are reading this please pray for us that the Lord will give us direction from this point. When we hit 20+ mark we will be getting close to our capacity to fitting people in so we are praying now that God will give us the direction that we need to go from here. God is doing wonderful things. Have a blessed day.

10% or 100%

Our General Evangelism Coordinator, Bro. Lanny Carter, has encouraged everyone to work for 10% membership increase in their local church this year. I was thinking about that and realized that 1 person would be more than a 10% increase in our local church(as far as covenant members go). So what I am shooting for is 100% increase in our membership and more than that in our attendance for the year. We have very good prospects of at least doubling the attendance in a short time and I am trusting the Lord that as these people fall in love with Jesus they will eventually join the Church as well.
Bro. Donnie Estep lately starting something called, catching people in the act, of doing something good that is. I was glad to be able to catch one of the members hear in Franklin doing that very thing this week. They ran into someone in a bad situation, in need, and immediately responded. They, to my knowledge, didn't worry about what they were going to get out of the deal, but simply realized that they had something this family needed greatly, and gave out of the abundance of their heart. People like that make it a joy to pastor! I am not saying in any way that I had anything to do with them making their decision, because I didn't. It is simply wonderful to know that the membership here have the heart that Christ desires for them to. Check back soon to hear about the great things that God is doing here. God bless.